Tuesday, January 18, 2011

Lisa Ebert Reading at Duff's in the CWE on Monday, January 24

Lisa Ebert will be one of the featured readers at Duff's, 392 North Euclid, on Monday, January 24, along with Dwight Bitikofer and Eamonn Wall. Langen Neubacher of StL LOUD will play before and after the readers. An open-mic will follow the featured readers, and advance sign-up is encouraged. Doors open at 7:30, and the cover is $3.

Lisa Ebert, Assistant Professor of English at Lewis and Clark Community College, resides in St. Louis with four sons and one rock-and-roll husband. Her poetry, fiction and non-fiction have appeared in River Styx, The Riverfront Times, St. Louis Magazine, Literal Chaos, Bad Shoe, and Flood Stage: An Anthology of St. Louis Poets. Her doomsday novel will be released later this summer by Walrus Publishing.

Benjamin Button

The short story came before that movie --
much debated for value and questioned
for its pretty casting –
So I chose the story first
On an audiotape in my car during a drive.

What a writer to make me cry
over the loss of adulthood:
I considered being denied the steering wheel in my hands,
and job to go to, and money to spend at will,
and the rolling-by scenery for me to enjoy,
the destiny of autonomy, freedom,
fading away into the nighttime of infancy.

I never imagined
the worst part of motherhood
would be re-living childhood with all its pain
and lack of human rights.
I hated being little.
I hated obeying without trust.
I never predicted
that I’d have to walk a delicate line
in my community, for the sake of children,
to protect my children
by smiling graciously at cruel adults.

When Benjamin Button turned fifty,
and drifted down to twenty,
the accumulated wisdom of age
was his to wield, and life was his to enjoy.
But when he shrank further
so shrank his rights, his safety, his freedom.

Once these children of mine are launched
I will tell Mary to kiss my ass
and get off my property with those policemen and
her boring husband.
And maybe I’ll moon her, too.